


Automaton

by babybrotherdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Episode: s12e21 There's Something About Mary, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-30 21:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybrotherdean/pseuds/babybrotherdean
Summary: It took two weeks of treatments to break him, when he was young. For Mary, it takes four.





	Automaton

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I watched the episode and I just. I wanted to do a thing.

_“Just kill me!”_

It’s been a very long time since Ketch has felt the sort of twinge that Mary’s outburst creates in his chest. There was something there, weeks ago, when he shot Mick in the back of the head, a flicker of hesitation and doubt, but with Mary on her knees in front of him, trying to take her own life, begging him to do it for her, this is-

The treatments are working. He knows the procedure inside and out; a combination of psychoactive drugs and carefully targeted pain that work together to reprogram the mind. A complicated technique, and a time-consuming one, but it certainly produces results. A numbing of the affect, dulled emotional response. A certain amount of suggestibility.

It took two weeks of treatments to break him, when he was young. For Mary, it takes four.

He knows he’s supposed to be pleased with those changes. She’s become the perfect partner; unquestioningly loyal to their cause and a perfect killer. She’s exactly what he’s always known she could be, but still-

He can’t wipe away that shattered look in her eyes when she’d tried to shoot herself. He can’t help but think of that tiny spark when she’d disarmed him, that flicker of the fire that made him like her in the first place, that made him fall in lo-

It’s gone, now.

She sits beside him as they drive away from the bunker, and she’s quiet. “I’m fine,” she tells him, and seems to be entirely unaffected by the prospect of her children suffocating underground as a direct result of their actions. Her expression is even, and her shoulders are relaxed, and her eyes are unsettlingly empty.

They’ve created the perfect hunter, Ketch thinks. He’s gotten what he wanted in the first place, and now Mary can remain by his side. His partner.

A pair of broken dolls with the hearts carved out. A matching set.

That thought doesn’t settle him the way it’s supposed to, and he can’t stop thinking about that spark that’s supposed to be there. The fire, passion, whatever. The part of Mary that made her unique. That made her a fighter to begin with.

It isn’t Mary Campbell sitting beside him in the car. That’s what he decides. It isn’t Mary Campbell, and it isn’t Mary Winchester. He’s not really sure anymore that it’s Mary at all.

Mary would’ve fought this. Mary loved her sons more than anything, and she wouldn’t be idly watching the road go by after everything they’d just done.

Mary is gone. Mary has slipped through his fingers, or perhaps been crushed between them when he held on too tight. Ketch wonders if maybe she’d have been better off dead, after all, because this- this isn’t Mary anymore. This isn’t the woman he wanted to hang onto, who he fought desperately to save from the cleansing of the American hunters.

There’s a stranger sitting beside him in the passenger seat, and perhaps he’d been lying earlier, because before this, he was so sure that he knew her. So sure that he could control her and teach her a better way.

Looking at the automaton he’s left with now, there’s a tight feeling in his chest and a lump in his throat. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe- maybe they’ve made a mistake.

_“Please.”_

Maybe watching this happen to Mary- watching the light fade from her eyes into the dull colour of obedience, and watching everything about her fade into nonexistence- maybe this is what regret is supposed to feel like.

_(Maybe he can still fix it.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Still holding out for Ketch to pull a heel-face turn. Please. For Mary.


End file.
